Hello, FleemCo

A Replacements fan fiction with many crossovers—spoilers for the finale!
(A/N: this is an explanatory fic to clear up some backstory of Luminary Uprise, another story by yours truly, but you don’t need to read that to get this, and you don’t need to read this to get that.)

A telephone rang. Todd Daring, newly hired operator for FleemCo by his uncle Conrad Fleem, picked it up. Using his deepest voice and donning his disguise mustache, he answered: “Hello, FleemCo!”
“Hello,” an even deeper voice answered back. This wasn’t a customer in the usual age demographic that used FleemCo’s Replacement program, but Todd shrugged it off. “I am looking for twelve very special replacements. I am willing to pay top dollar for them.”
“Top dollar?” Todd’s eyes lit up with dollar signs. “Sweeeeeet. What can I help you with?”
“Name for me the twelve most powerful villains you can imagine…the twelve toughest warriors and schemers that ever were.”
“You mean like in books and stuff? I mean, the only real villain I know is Dr. Scorpius, and he’s—“
“No! He won’t work!”
“Yeah, I thought not.”
“Yes…as in books…and stuff. Name them for me.”
“Well, I just got done playing Kingdom Hearts II, and I gotta say, Organization XIII is pretty—“
“It cannot be the Organization!” the voice said angrily.
“Sheesh, you’re crabby,” Todd said. “Okay. So lemme see…well, when you’re thinkin’ villains, you just gotta think Maleficent!”

A man in a Red FleemCo jumpsuit approached Maleficent as she sat on the silver throne of the Castle That Never Was. As he told her what was expected of her, she threw her head back and laughed.
“He wants ME to make an alliance with HIM?” she cackled. “How pitiful!”
“But madam,” the FleemCo employee explained, “if you two join forces, the multiverse could be yours to command. I’m just saying.”
“Well, that is an interesting idea…I suppose I shall have to give it some consideration.”

“And then,” Todd continued, “you just GOTTA have Sephiroth from Final Fantasy Seven! ‘Cause he’s just…so…COOL! What with the one wing and the giant sword and the theme song and everything—“

A fire rose upon the earth of Gaia. Sephiroth glanced to his left and right, wondering what had summoned him.
Two men in red FleemCo jumpsuits met his gaze, looking serious as Sephiroth himself.

“Then, I dunno,” Todd went on. “I guess Darth Vader is a pretty bad guy. And I mean, everyone knows him.”

Flanked by a legion of men in FleemCo jumpsuits, Darth Vader walked deliberately down the hall.
“This is a good place to leave me,” he assured the FleemCo men. “It feels good—“ he inhaled deeply through his mask “—to once again tread the halls of the Death Star.”

“Then how about somebody REALLY creepy? Lemme send ya…I dunno, some guy that controls nightmares and looks like death! I mean, that would just be cool…if there are any imaginary bad guys out there that do that.”

The FleemCo employees reeled in a body from the ocean. It reeked of carrion—but then again, that was the man’s name: Carrion.
Christopher Carrion stood to his full height, towering over the men in jumpsuits and fixing his death’s stare upon them. He felt at the collar around his neck where he usually kept his nightmares suspended in fluid.
“Fix this,” he commanded.

“Maybe…maybe…” Todd thought it over. He said the first villain’s name that popped into his head. “Ganondorf?”

The Shadow King flexed his fist, watching the Triforce birthmark on it glow with the power of the goddesses.
“What possessed you to bring me before you today?” he asked of the FleemCo employees.
“Well,” one of the men said as friendly and professionally as possible, “someone placed a very special order for you to join him. It could very well help you achieve your goal of worldwide darkness, if that helps you make your decision.”

“Oh, Voldemort!” Todd cried. “How could I forget him?”

“I…was dead,” Voldemort said, looking at his hands, “and now…I am alive…”
“Well,” the FleemCo worker explained, “the guy who placed the order let us use the powers of darkness to bargain with the god of the Underworld, so you’re in full working order!”
Voldemort laughed. “That…is WONDERFUL!”

“How many am I on now?” Todd asked. “Seven? Well, how about making your eighth guy some kinda shape shifter that embodies darkness itself!”

“I have my own missions,” Saint Dane told the men in red. However, when they told him the name of the man placing the order, he stopped.
“I have not heard that name in a long time,” Dane remarked. He chuckled. “I suppose I should pay him a visit.”

“Well,” said Todd, “my sister’s been reading these silly Twilight books about vampire love stories. The vampires sound pretty cool, though. Is there a really big, bad vampire there? ‘Cause if there is, having a vampire on your team would be totally awesome!”

“But brother—“ Marcus stammered.
“You and Caius may take care of the Volturi without me,” Aro insisted. “Besides, I have a feeling that I shall still be able to carry out my duties with the Volturi while completing my deal.”
He glanced at the FleemCo workers to either side of him. “In any case, the man who has paid for my transport promises great things for the Volturi…great things…he could be the key to our ultimate victory.”

“How about that guy from Lord of the Rings?” Todd suggested. “You know, the one with the rings?”

Sauron crawled along the burning floor of Mount Doom. What a pitiful scrap of existence he was…
Then came the men in the red jumpsuits, and his fate turned completely around.

“Then how about some completely psychotic sorceress queen or something?” Todd offered. “We haven’t used many girls so far…”

In response to the FleemCo workers, Redd Heart only laughed. And laughed and laughed.
“That means yes,” her sidekick, the Cat, explained.

“Oh! Oh! I got it!” Todd yelled in triumph. “That anime guy who can kill people with his notebook! Light Yagami! He is AWESOME! I am so glad Tasumi got me watching that show…”

“Mr. Yagami?” the man from FleemCo asked, knocking on Light’s door.
“Yes?” Light spun around and glared furtively, trying to hide what he had on his desk.
“We know about the Death Note.”
Light panicked. How to find out this man’s name? How?
“You cannot stop what is the will of justice!” he cried.
“How about you join up with a guy that wants to promote your idea of justice? He’ll help you build your own kingdom if you build his. Just use your notebook. Oh, and here’s an apple for your Shinigami.”
As Ryuk plucked the apple out of the man’s hand, Light considered. “I suppose I can hardly refuse that sort of offer…”

“And last?” Todd thought it over. “I dunno. Count Olaf maybe. Just ‘cause he likes to burn stuff.”

“Truly?” Olaf snickered at the men who had just given him the proposition. “Yes! Now I can finally be EVIL and WIN, too!”

“Thank you,” said the deep voice. “That will be satisfactory.”
“Yeah, good luck with all your imaginary villains. You know, FleemCo doesn’t usually replace people with imaginary people, but we don’t usually charge either, so as long as you’re paying!”
There was an annoyed cough on the other end of the line. Then: “Thank you for your service. Your pay shall arrive as soon as is feasible.”
A red car pulled up to Todd’s lawn, where he sat outside with the phone. A FleemCo worker jumped out, handed Todd a fat check, and jumped back in.
“Wow,” Todd commented. “That got feasible fast.”
Riley stepped out into the yard, licking an ice cream pop. “Hey, Todd, whatcha got there?”
“Oh, nothing…just a HUGE CHECK from a guy who just paid top dollar for us to replace some of his friends with IMAGINARY villains!”
“Todd!” Riley cried. “Why would you do that?”
“Because the only REAL bad guy we have around here is Dr. Scorpius, or should I say Dr. Thcorpiuth! So I thought of some of the coolest imaginary bad guys I knew, and I even just made up some descriptions and hoped someone had written someone like that.”
“Let me see that check.” Riley took the check from Todd’s hand. “Todd! This check is signed ‘Xehanort!’”
“Hey, that’s the same name as the bad guy from that video game I just got done playing!”
“Wasn’t that game all about other worlds? Todd, what if there really are other worlds? What if those bad guys are REAL? Then you just set one really powerful bad guy up with—“
“A new Organization XIII,” Todd pieced together. “Sweeeet.”
“Todd, that is not sweet!”
“Aw, c’mon, Riley. You know as well as I do that Xehanort and Voldemort and Darth Vader and those guys aren’t REAL—“
Then the ground started shaking, and Todd only had a few more minutes in which he could truly doubt.